Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id SAA15553 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Fri, 8 Jun 2001 18:46:44 +0100 From: <joedees@bellsouth.net> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2001 12:49:15 -0500 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: USA Today - interview with Gugatkin and de Waal on animal culture Message-ID: <3B20C9CB.4972.1667C2@localhost> In-reply-to: <F129M1JOMyQlmLFQG1000011f2e@hotmail.com> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12c) Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
On 8 Jun 2001, at 9:12, Scott Chase wrote:
>
>
>
>
> >From: "Wade T.Smith" <wade_smith@harvard.edu>
> >Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> >To: "Memetics Discussion List" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
> >Subject: Re: USA Today - interview with Gugatkin and de Waal on
> >animal culture Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2001 21:18:29 -0400
> >
> >Hi Ray Recchia -
> >
> > >His and de Waal's accounts may just be persuasive enough to
> > >convince humans it's finally time to open the door and allow
> > >animals into the culture club.
> >
> >Or, perhaps, to remove "culture" from the behavior club....
> >
> >
> Why? What would be wrong with using the word "culture" if defined in
> terms of "nongenetic behavioral transmission" (see de Waal. 2001. The
> Ape and the Sushi Master. Basic Books. New York, p. 237). The big
> problem would not be in using the word "culture", but employing this
> term in a way that anthropocentrically places humans within a charmed
> circle, removed from the "lowly" animals.
>
> One problem I could see would be the casting of cultural capacity in
> terms of homology versus analogy. If other apes such as our chimp
> cousins can exhibit traces of culture it would't be much of a leap to
> consider something homologous underlying this, but if we attribute
> fish, insects or other groups phylogenetically far removed from us
> with culture, then we might consider if we are talking about the same
> phenomenon or something superficially similar that has arisen via
> convergence.
>
> If a sort of non-genic transmission of behavior that could have been
> called culture existed in the common ancestor we shared with these
> other groups, then homology might enter the picture. Did the stem
> group of the metazoans have culture? It might be less contentious to
> think about the stem of the human and non-human apes exhibiting
> something cultural. Crude tool usage by chimps makes one wonder how
> unique the "third chimp" (sensu Diamond) really is.
>
> With no background in anthropology or primatology, I'm just babbling
> forth, chewing my cud so to speak.
>
Specifically, chimps do not use tools, but manually modify
implements for present tasks; manually stripping branches to feed
on termites falls within this category. Technically (that is,
anthropologically) speaking, a tool is an object used to modify
another object (such as the rock used to knap a handaxe); no
nonhuman primates are known to use tools in the wild. Neither do
they retain implements (it was opined that they left implements at
a use site and returned to use them again, but this is wishful
hermeneutics; the Occam explanation is that they discard them
onsite when they are finished with them and use what is available
when they return), nor do they assemble toolkits composed of
differing and task-specific shapes. While paying attention to the
similarities between Homo and simians, it is important not to
overlook the differences. Reference: INVERSTIGATIONS INTO
THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE AND CONSCIOUSNESS, by Tran
Duc Thao, D. Reidel 1984.
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This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
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